


Ambush

by Fenri



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:58:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7580701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenri/pseuds/Fenri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the way to some of their missions Damen and Laurent's camp gets ambushed and Damen goes missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ambush

All Laurent’s strength went into controlling his breathing. Because if he allowed himself to take his mind of breathing in and breathing out, he began chocking. That’s why he didn’t notice Jord approaching until he heard his footsteps. He knew what the man would say even before he opened his mouth. But still he asked:  
“Well?”  
“Nothing, Your Highness.”  
Laurent more like dropped his head than nodded.  
“Keep looking.”  
“Your Highness, it’s getting dark.”  
Laurent would gladly snap at anyone for less than disobeying a direct order.  
“I said keep looking,” he repeated in a superhuman attempt at calm.  
“Men are exhausted.”  
Jord was one of his most loyal followers, he has been by his side for years. Laurent knew that when he dared to talk back it was important. But still:  
“Are you proposing we should stop?”  
“It’s been four days. If we didn’t find him by now, it’s just… It’s a lost cause, Your Highness.”  
“So I should just stop searching, should I?” he growled at him. He thought he would hit Jord if he replied affirmative.  
Jord made an uncertain awkward movement with his shoulders.  
“We need to keep moving south,” he said apologetically.  
“Move south? Leaving him behind?” Laurent snarled hoping that Jord would see how ridiculous he sounded. “We keep looking until we find him. Then we move south.”  
“I don’t think there is anyone to look for, Sire,” said Jord carefully. Laurent felt choking again.  
“No.”  
“I’m sorry for your loss.”  
There was a pause before Jord spoke again:  
“We can’t stay here longer, exposed to another possible ambush. We need to move south. Your Highness, I really wish we found him. Him or… something to give you closure. But we need to go.” And then after another pause: “Should I order the men to settle at the camp for the night?”  
Laurent managed a short nod.  
Jord bowed and turned to leave.  
“We keep searching tomorrow,” said Laurent to his back. “Then we go south.”  
“As you say, Sire,” replied Jord. “Please try and have some sleep so you won’t collapse. There’ll be time to mourn later.”  
Laurent stumbled blindly to his tent and dropped down on the bundle of blankets. Every muscle of his body shivered and he felt extremely fatigued, but none of this mattered because of the numbness paralyzing his mind. He clenched his fingers in fists and straightened them out again hoping to control the shaking. It did not work, so he just lay down on his back looking up at the folds of his tent. He desperately needed sleep, he knew that, but was it worth seeing it all again and again in his sleep?  
They were attacked 4 days ago, or four nights ago to be precise. Their group was not really big, no more than two dozen people, so that they could move fast through the land to the Akielon southern border. The ambush happened when they were camped for the night at the river bank. It started with an arrow that took down one of their watchmen. One clean shot straight through the temple, nobody was even supposed to notice a man fall down silently at the edge of the camp, but Damen had a neck for noticing out of the ordinary when it concerned battle strategy, so they all were up and ready the minute the dead body hit the ground. Next hour was a mess of screams and metal clanking. Laurent got separated from Damen in the fight. It was difficult to consider his surroundings in the dim light of a single campfire. He probably wouldn’t have noticed Damen in the dark, but his eyes caught his figure outlined against the grey night sky, fighting on the rocks above the stream. He saw him slip, his arms trying to grab for something, he saw him fall. He heard himself scream and the next moment he felt Jord collide with his body knocking him down on the ground to save him from a strike of one of his attackers. It was only twenty minutes later that they managed to kill or incapacitate their ambushers and dashed to look for Damen down the river. They searched until dawn, but found nothing. The current was pretty strong so Laurent ordered for them to go down the stream and continue their search. Now it was four days later and quite some miles down the stream – and they still found nothing.  
Laurent pressed his hands to his eyes. They will find him tomorrow. He probably just got carried away far by the water and now he is having trouble getting back. Maybe his leg is injured. Laurent blocked all the other possibilities from his mind. He will find him tomorrow, and for that he needed sleep, he told himself sternly. He turned on his side and curled into a ball with his head clasped between his hands as if it would keep him from going mad. His body, once allowed rest, immediately slipped into uneasy slumber. In his exhausted half-sleeping mind pictures flashed: pictures of people fighting, of Damen falling, of the endless river bank, the mud, the tired people, Damen smiling at him, Damen in chains at his feet, an arrow striking his father through the chest, sounds of swords clashing, footsteps, voices, Kastor saying he’d kill Damen, Damen’s figure slipping on the rocks, Jord knocking him on the ground, his uncle’s cold voice ordering to kill Damen in Kingsmeet, Auguste’s dead face, tired and sad Jord telling him “I’m sorry for your loss”, Damen dropping a pitcher, sounds of footsteps and voices getting noisier, Nicaise’s head appearing from the dirty bag, Jord quietly telling someone not to wake him up, Damen’s hushed voice promising him not to, Damen’s warmth, Damen’s smell, Damen’s…  
“Damen?” Laurent tore himself from sleep through some painful throbs in his head and looked around blinking and trying to see.  
“Hey, honey.”  
“Damen!” Laurent threw himself at him, digging his fingers into his shoulders, tugging him as close to himself as possible, burying his face in the curve of his neck, drinking in the scent of his body mixed with the smell of dust, and river, and fish, and horses… feeling his big strong hands hugging him, sliding up and down his back reassuringly, feeling a trace of kisses on his hair mixed with his warm breath whispering comforting words. Laurent was shaking more than ever repeating Damen’s name over and over in a trembling voice, unable to let go of him, and unwilling to lift his face from Damen’s shoulder until his tears dried up.  
He was still wrapped around him even after he managed to calm down. They were sitting with Damen’s back leaned against a pole supporting the tent and Laurent in his lap, with his legs and arms around Damen's body, his head resting on his shoulder.  
“Where have you been?” he mumbled into his neck. “Are you hurt?”  
“No, I’m fine,” Damen said, lazily untangling knots in Laurent’s messy hair with his fingers. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow morning, all right? Let’s have some sleep.”  
“No. Tell me now.”  
“All right. But just in general, you’ll get the details in the morning. So I fell into the river during the fight. Stupid really, I did not see where the edge was. Anyway, I think I hit my head on some rock when I fell, because I blacked out after that. Apparently some fisherman kids who were supposed to check the nets saw me from the other side of the stream and fished me out. They were too scared to approach the camp though so they just hid me in the reeds up the stream. They said they saw you searching for me, but did not know if you were the bad guys or the good guys, so they just hid me in their boat shed behind the curve of the hill where I had the pleasure to come to my senses the next day, all covered in fish. They were damn scared of me, but I managed to gather some picture of what had happened from them. Anyway, when I returned to the camp, you were gone. So I had to go back to the village to get a horse to catch up with you. And then I headed south, because I figured that’s where you’d be waiting for me…”  
“I wasn’t,” mumbled Laurent with his mouth still pressed against Damen’s shoulder.  
“Yeah, I figured it out too late though and already wasted a day. So I had to turn back. And I figured that if you thought that I… uh… that something had happened to me, you’d be searching for me down the stream. So that’s where I went and now here I am.”  
They stayed quiet for a while, Damen still stroking Laurent’s hair. Then Laurent lifted his face to look at his husband:  
“You know, it was rather arrogant of you to think that it wouldn’t even cross my mind that you can… get hurt. That I would see you fall down from a cliff and walk away saying ‘Oh, he’ll catch up to us later. He’s Damianos the Great. He’s indestructible. Let’s not bother looking for him.’”  
“Well, it wasn’t that much of a cliff really. But yeah. I thought you’d give me time to catch up to you before you move so far east from our original route in search for me.”  
“Arrogant.”  
“If you say so, honey. Now let’s maybe sleep? I’m pretty tired, and Jord told me you didn’t have much rest either.”  
Damen lay down on the blankets, allowing Laurent to keep his whole body on top of him. The sound of Damen’s heartbeat and the sensation of the steady rise and fall of his chest suddenly made Laurent so sleepy and tired.  
“Jord thought you were dead. He gave me his condolences.”  
“You can mock him in the morning. Now sleep.”


End file.
